Commenting on the formal pay recommendation put forward by the Association of Colleges (AoC) of 2.5% or £750, whichever is the greater, Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union, said:
“This is a deeply unsatisfactory offer which will have the effect of compounding an already vast pay gap between colleges and schools, standing at an astonishing 23% for Further Education teachers according to recent NFER research. All staff working in FE deserve better than this.
“We again call upon the Labour government to take FE seriously, with a significant injection of funding now to close the pay gap between schools and colleges and the extension of binding collective bargaining on pay and working conditions to the sector. Without such measures addressing the multiple crises faced by the sector, the skills agenda promised by Labour will be a non-starter.”